Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – November 13, 2014”
Alan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com‘ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for today, it is Thursday, November 13th, 2014. Eleven months of the year are almost gone, it’s hard to believe. I cannot get over how quickly time flies. Of course, I’m an older guy now, and maybe time flies as I get older, but holy cow, it’s November, December’s coming, and that’s the crazy Christmas season that the chairs start going like crazy off the shelves, it’s hard to believe we’re here. Anyway, I hope you’re having a great beginning of the winter. I know it’s cold here in Salt Lake today, we’ve got our first little bit of a snow skiff today out on the valley floor, I had to get some winter tires on today, but anyway, we’re getting to that time and that season.
[SCREEN TEXT: Shopping Season – Don’t Wait! (Stock Disappears Quickly)]
Alan: So, before I begin with stock status, I thought I’d just mention – and I’ll get right in to this right off the bat – this is the season where, you know, massage chairs start to go like crazy, you know, starting in November, and Thanksgiving, and Black Friday/Cyber Monday, all the way through Christmas, and all the way through the new year, very, very busy time, so if you’re thinking about getting a massage chair – and I’m not saying this in a self-serving manner, I’m saying this to be honest and true to you because I’ve been doing this for 10 years, I know the cycles. Even though the massage chair companies stock up with chairs for, with inventory for this time of the year, I’ll tell you, they usually run out of a model, or a color, or models, or colors, because people just start ordering chairs like crazy, and the supply starts to diminish rather quickly, and then they don’t get new supply in until the new year, so you know, sometimes you got to wait a month to get new chairs. So, if you’re thinking of getting a massage chair for Thanksgiving, Christmas, holiday season, order soon, don’t wait until Black Friday/Cyber Monday, because your color and your model may already be spoken for. Anyway, that’s just a word to the wise, and take it from a guy that’s many consider to be not very wise, but to the wise, I give you that counsel.
[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]
Alan: Alright, now, stock, as far as stock goes, most chairs are in stock right now. The ‘Black’ Iyashi, the new black exterior Iyashi that I’ve talked to you about the last few updates, they’re supposed to be in this week. The Osaki OS-4000T in a couple of colors, I think ‘Charcoal’ and ‘Crème’ are back-ordered until this week as well, and what else is supposed to be coming in? The Panasonic MA73, the new Panasonic model, which is selling quite well, more so than the MA70 did, when it first came out, but the MA73 is back-ordered until the middle of December. So, I’ve got orders in now that’re supposed to be filled, you know, for the holidays, and they may not be because of this back-order business. Let’s see, what else are we talking about, back-ordered?
[SCREEN TEXT: AcuTouch 8.0 Bali Now Up on our Site]
Alan: I know that the new Human Touch, the Human Touch AcuTouch 8.0 Bali, which I just put up on the website finally, I don’t still, I still don’t have all the data for my comparison chart, but I’ve got enough to put the feature set up there on the web so you can learn a little bit more about this chair. Beautiful looking chair, like every Human Touch chair, it’s got beautiful aesthetics, and a very nice looking chair, just a good looking chair, like all Human Touch chairs are. Of course, there’s not as many airbags, and some of the other things that some of the other chairs might have, some of the bells and whistles, but a beautiful chair, with a good set of air cells, and of course, the proprietary foot-and-calf paddles, paddle massagers, great chair, but that one’s up, but that’s out of stock. So, from what I understand, it is out of stock, from what I understand, I don’t know what the estimated arrival time is for that model.
[SCREEN TEXT: New Titan Chairs Category]
Alan: I also might mention, I put up, and I think we talked about this last time, but we added a new category to our website for Titan chairs. Now, Titan chairs are made by, or imported by the same company that imports Osaki chairs, and Titan chairs have always been kind of a less expensive, maybe a lower, kind of a lower grade chair. Well, they’ve introduced a couple of models that they wanted a few of their distributors to carry, and I’m one of them. So, they asked me if I’d carry the TP-Pro 8300 and the 8400, and I checked them out, and bang for the buck, they look like a pretty good deal. Now, I’m going to say that with this caveat, sometimes things look great on paper, and look great on the reviews, you know, or the literature, you know, if you do a literature review on site, you might say ‘Hey, that chair looks phenomenal.’ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people come to my showroom from out of state, thinking in their minds, ‘This is the chair I want because I’ve done the research, and I’ve done the homework, and this is the one I want because of the feature set.’ They come in, and they don’t even like that chair, and they end up buying another one altogether. So, I say all this with a grain of salt, but these Titan chairs are, they look really good for the price, like the TP 8400 looks like the Osaki Marquis. As a matter fact, they might even be made in the same factory, for all I know. It’s got the extended roller track, what they call the L-track, and it goes 50 inches, instead of the typical 30, 29, 30, 31-inch roller track, it goes down the back, and then under the butt, so you get the butt, glutes, and maybe the top of the hamstrings massaged. It also has zero gravity, it also has mechanical foot rollers, it also has a space-saving feature, so you can put it up against the wall, or closer to the wall than a traditional chair, and it kind of scoops under when you recline it, so it doesn’t have to be so close to the wall. That chair is going for $3495, it’s $3995, with a $500 instant discount, brings it down to $3495. Then, for $2995, you can get the 8300, which doesn’t have the extended track, but it does have a 33-inch roller track, which is longer than most. So, it’ll go down in to your buttock a little bit more than most other chairs, so you get a good low back massage. It’s got zero gravity, it’s got mechanical foot rollers, it’s got a space-saving feature, and it’s a cooler, it’s more of a traditional looking chair, it’s kind of cool. They’ve got this beige color, I think they call it ‘Beige’ or ‘Light Brown,’ but it’s a cool looking color, and it’s a nice looking chair, it doesn’t look like a huge behemoth chair, but it’s only for $2995. So, these price points are what interested me in the Titan chairs, these are the only Titan chairs we’re going to carry, at least at this point, but I think you might find the chairs interesting looking, and the feature set looks great for the dollar spent. Most chairs – oh, and they both have 3D roller technology, and I was going to – I wanted to say that, because up until now, chairs with 3D roller technology are usually a little bit more expensive – you pay more money, usually over $4000. The only chairs that I’m aware of that have the 3D technology that are under $4000 would be the Human Touch ZeroG 4.0 and the Human Touch HT-7450, but you don’t have the same kind of feature set that you have with a lot of these other Chinese chairs that have the bells and whistles all over the place. So, anyway, check out those chairs, you can go on our website, and check out those two new Titan chairs. I’m kind of excited about them, and I don’t, I’m going to get one in my showroom, and until I do, I really don’t have much to say about it. I hope to go visit Osaki in the new year, they’ve got their new place that I visited just before they moved in, I visited that new place in Dallas, I think it was Dallas, or Arlington, or wherever it’s at, and it was huge, but they didn’t, all they had was some inventory in the warehouse, they didn’t really have offices, or anything set up, or a showroom. Now they do, and I’m going to go back and visit it, and while I’m there, as long as they’ve got that TP-Pro 8300 and 8400, I’ll sit on both those chairs, and give you, you know, give you a little feedback on it. OK, what else have we got to talk about today?
[SCREEN TEXT: Three-Part Interview with Inada USA President, Cliff Levin]
Alan: Oh, I put up the, I interviewed Cliff Levin again, and every year I interview the heads of these companies, or at least, the principals of these companies, and I interview Cliff Levin every year, I interview Jim Coppins from Infinite Therapeutics every year, I interview – oh, my goodness, who’s it – oh, and I interviewed Mark Wood from Cozzia, and I haven’t talked to him for a while. I’ve asked to speak to someone at Human Touch, to interview someone at Human Touch. I’ve been to Human Touch, and I’ve visited their warehouse, and I met with some of the principals, but I haven’t really had an opportunity to interview anyone, so I’ve put the feelers out for that. Osaki, it’s been tough to get someone to interview there, hopefully I’ll get someone to interview, and chitchat about what Osaki’s got up their sleeves, and then of course, Panasonic’s a big company, and I don’t know who to interview there. As a matter of fact, if you’ve read, been reading my posts about the Panasonic MA73, which is their new chair that I was telling you about, my contacts at Panasonic didn’t even really know all about the chair, I had to contact my customers to find out about the chair. So, I don’t know who exactly I would talk to at Panasonic, that could give me any kind of an insight. I used to talk to Ed Cini, who was the main guy over there for the national distribution for the health products, like the massage chairs. We talked, I never recorded the interviews, but we had interviews and chitchats about the industry, and it was great, but I don’t know if they – Ed’s not with the company anymore, so I don’t really know who I would talk to – and then, you know, so anyway, I do these interviews. I just put up an interview with Cliff Levin, a three-part interview, and it talked, in great detail, about the DreamWave, and about the Flex 3S. We even talked about the Duet, which I get a lot of interest, I have, there’s a lot of people interested in it, that are contacting me about it, and that’s not a chair they’re going to be carrying any time soon. So, don’t expect to see that thing for another 18 to 24 months, if at all, in the US market, but we talked about that in that video. So, watch the interview with Cliff Levin, it’s very informative, Cliff’s always a good interview, he’s great. He’s as transparent as he wants me to think he is, so I don’t really know exactly, always, what’s going on at Inada, but he does let me in on some good stuff, and I love talking to him about the chairs, and his chairs, and he’s very passionate about his chairs, and the quality of them.
[SCREEN TEXT: Inada Flex 3S Price Increase to $6799 on December 1st!]
Alan: Oh, speaking of Inada, the price of the Flex 3S, which is their new model, it came out in June, July, that chair is going to go up from $6499 to $6799 on December 1st. So, if you’re interested in that chair, order it, and don’t wait until Thanksgiving weekend, because it might be all gone, because a) the price is going to be going up, and that’s right, it’ll be right after the Thanksgiving weekend, and b) it’s a new chair, that’s going to be, people are going to buy it for the holiday season. So, you’ve got those two things working against you, so order soon if you want the Flex 3S, great chair for posture correction, stretching, Cliff talks about that quite a bit in the interview, so check out it.
[SCREEN TEXT: Synchrony Bank 18 Months, Interest Free Financing – 11/26 – 12/09]
Alan: Alright, what else have we got to talk about? Oh, Synchrony Bank, now you know that the GE Capital has now become Synchrony Bank. You’ve probably seen their commercials on TV. They’re everywhere, and I think they’re doing all they can to kind of get a bigger foot in to the market, but they provide our financing for us, and we offer, right now, 6 and 12 months, interest free, minimum payment financing. The reason we don’t offer more – and I don’t know if you realize this, but – OK, any time someone buys a chair from us with a credit card, or financing, I get charged by the credit card companies, or by the financing companies, a percent of the total amount of the sale. So, for example, Visa, MasterCard, and Discover charge me 3 percent, on average, 3 percent of the purchase price, and then American Express charges me 3.5 percent. Well, Synchrony Bank charges me for every transaction as well. So, for the 6 month, I think it’s just under 3, for the 12 month, it’s between 3 and 4 percent. Well, their 18-month program, during the regular, rest of the year is, I think, 9.5 percent, almost 10 percent, they charge me for the privilege of offering financing through their company. Well, there’s a certain time, certain times, I think it’s four or five times throughout the year, where they offer a discount rate to me, and I think it’s 5.74, or something like that. It’s still high, but it’s down enough that it makes it feasible for me to offer the 18-month financing, and that special is coming up, November 26th through December 9th. So, if you’re interested in getting financing, and you want to get some financing, 18-month financing – you can get the 6 and 12-month financing any time from us, but if you want the 18-month financing, it’s going to be here – we’ll be offering it from November 26th to December 9th, just jump on that if you want to. Alright, now, I just entered a few, I’ve had a couple of blog posts that I’ve put up over the last couple of weeks that would be of interest to you. One is the new Titan chairs, and I talk about, I talk about the models, and I lay out the, kind of a brief summary of their feature sets. You can also go on our website, and under the category of Titan on our nav bar, you can click 8300 or 8400, and read all about it too, and then, the second blog post I wrote was in response to a question from a fellow in Egypt. We’ve got this customer, a guy that’s buying a chair in Egypt, and in his broken English, he emailed me, and said ‘I need to know what the measurements of the calf and foot wells are, in all of the chairs in your showroom.’ Well, for heaven’s sake no one’s ever asked me that. I put the, I wrote an article a couple of months ago called ‘Would I,’ or ‘Would I Fit in a Massage Chair?’ or something like that, and I talk about, and list, the measurements between the shoulder airbags, and the hip airbags, of the chairs in our showroom, because some people can’t get in there, like someone with a huge, broad shoulder, or a huge bottom, can’t fit in some of these chairs because the airbags are too tight. It’s kind of, you got to, you got to use like a crowbar or a shoehorn to get them in, and people are very sensitive to that, and so I’m sensitive to that now, but I have never thought about calves and feet. Of course, we know that some people have larger calves. Feet, for the most part, will fit in pretty much any chair, you know, knock on wood, and take that with a grain of salt, but calves can be huge, and I know this, because I’ve got – well, I used to have good-sized calves – and I’ll just mention to you, when you start getting older, over 50, 55, I’m going to tell you, you start to lose a few things. Number one is hair. Well, you don’t really lose it, it moves from your hairline, to your nose, and to your ears, and your eyebrows. So, what, when you used to have to cut your hair, now you got to trim all the other bloody parts of your face, and you also lose the ability to void your bladder because your prostate’s not as strong as it used to be, and another thing that you lose is muscle tone because your testosterone levels go down, and that leads to another thing that you start to lose a little bit on as well, but I’m not going to go in to that in this, this is for kids and families. Anyway, I want you to know that I have large calves, and I’ve always, there were certain pants I couldn’t wear because my calves were larger, now I can fit in them because my calves are smaller because of the muscle tone going down. Anyway, thank you testosterone. There’s some people that have huge calves, and when I say huge calves, I mean, you know, I’m not talking about, like fat calves, even though some may have fat calves, but large muscles, like muscle tone, and it’s not flab, that you can just easily compress. Some people have like, strong, firm muscles in there, and it’s hard, those airbags, when they compress, it can, it can be a little uncomfortable. If you’ve ever used the Inada YuMe, it’s got airbags that inflate on the calves, but then they also knead your calves, and it is a phenomenal massage. It’s the only chair that does it, but I knew one guy that his calves were so big, he couldn’t fit them in there, and then when we turned it, when we finally did get them in there, when we turned it on, it was like too much for him, the compression was too hard. So, anyway, I don’t even know where I’m going with this, that’s another thing you lose when you get older, you lose your mind, you lose your short-term memory.
[SCREEN TEXT: Foot & Calf Chair Measurements]
Alan: Anyway, oh, so, I took these measurements, so I go down to the showroom, and I take all these measurements of all the calves, and the width, the height, the depth, and I sent it to this fellow, and I thought to myself ‘Well, this is great information, I need to put this on my blog for other people.’ So, anyway, I put an article about foot and calf well sizes. So, and I actually had a customer once, it was a lady from Idaho, she bought a chair, she came in and tried them out, and none of the calf wells fit her, she had large calves, none of them fit her, except for one, and it barely fit her, and so when she took the chair home, and realized that it was still too much, and her calves were still too big, even for that one, so she sent the chair back. These are things that I don’t think about a lot, and other people, and the only, half the reason for, one of the reasons I have as many blog posts as I do, and as many articles, and videos, is because people ask me questions, and get me thinking, and get me answering these questions for everybody else, and so that leads to me making a video about it, or writing an article about it, blah, blah, blah, so, anyway, I thought I’d tell you about those blog posts.
[SCREEN TEXT: 888-259-5380]
Alan: Finally, I do have some floor models for sale. You know what, you can always call our showroom at 888-259-5380.
[SCREEN TEXT: Floor Models for Sale!]
Alan: You can always call and say ‘Hey, have you got any floor model for sale?’ You know, I just sold my Panasonic MA70 floor model, it was perfect condition. You still get the warranty on it, for the most part, on most of these chairs, you still get the warranty, and I’m replacing it with an MA73, the new chair that’s back-ordered, that I’m waiting for. I’ve got a couple of other chairs right now, like the Panasonic 30007, I’ve got that chair, I’ve got a Human Touch 9500, oh, and I’ve got an Osaki OS-4000T with the foot rollers, I’ve got one of those, and so I sell these for discounted prices. They’re various ages, you know, so one is like, a couple of years old, one’s a couple, yeah, but a couple of them are a couple years old, another one is like, two months old, or a month old. So, call any time, and I’ll give you the pricing on it when you call, if there’s any of the chairs that we have, at any given time throughout the year. OK, that’s it for floor models. Well, you know what, I think that is it for this week’s massage chair industry update. The next time I talk to you will either be, it might be right before Thanksgiving, today’s the 13th, the 27th, yeah, it’s going to be right around Thanksgiving, right around Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Yeah, if we’ve got any things going on there, or anything that you need to know about, we can’t really promote specials, or whatnot. If you want to find out about any sales or specials that we might have, download our free report. You know, go to the bottom of any page on my website, and down there, you can get the, you can opt in for the free report, and you can find, and you’ll be on our mailing list. Then I can send you emails of what sales we’ve got, what specials we’ve got, what new models are coming in, whatever, and you can find out if there’s any kind of deal there for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday thing. So, anyway, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ thanks so much for visiting, and spending some time with me today. If you have any questions, feel free to get ahold of me, you’ve seen the number already. If you like this video, or like what we’re doing, please feel free to ‘Like’ the video, subscribe to our video channel so that you can get updated with the subsequent videos, and share us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, we just appreciate you helping us spread the word about massage chairs. Have a great day, and we will talk to you in two weeks. Bye bye.
